What is the history of solitude in America? How are experiments on dolphins connected with consciousness raising and isolation tanks? And what does Thoreaus solitary experiment at Walden Pond have to teach us all in the digital age? On this episode of BackStory, Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh and Joanne Freeman examine the reasons Americans seek solitude.

Slauter is associate professor in the department of English language at University of Chicago. His scholarship focuses chiefly on transformations in political thought and behavior in the eighteenth century.

Walls is the author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life. She is a professor at University of Notre Dame.

Weaver is director of Institute of Native American Studies at University of Georgia. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community.

Burnett is a historian of science and a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of Keywords; For Further Consideration and Particularly Relevant to Academic Life and a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

About BackStory: BackStory brings historical perspective to the America of today. Each week, U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, Joanne Freeman and Nathan Connolly look at current issues and trace them back to their roots in American history. From the days of the Early Republic to the 21st century, BackStory reveals the connections (and disconnections) between the past and the present. BackStory makes history accessible for listeners  not only in the United States, but around the globe.

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